Truth & Originality

These are the two thing that came into my mind today.

Truth

If all the truths in the world are revealed, nobody will be debating anymore. Everybody will be fighting.
If everybody tells the truth, the world will be boring. We want to know the truth but to hear lies.

Originality

After millions of years, do you still think that whatever you do or say nobody in the world has ever done it before?
You’re original if you patent it before the first guy does.

Team & Leader, The great crumble.

hahah sth really good happened made me wanna take study break and come back here to rant about sth again. This time it’s about the worst project I’ve had since entering university.

In this particular project of mine, we have it all. Failed leadership, poor communication, miscommunication, free rider, weak personnel, wishful thinking, conflicts among members, and needless to say, zero teamwork. You name and the project has it. However, it didn’t really bother me because I knew this was gonna happen at the earlier stage of the project, though I have to admit that I didn’t expect it to be this bad.

In a project, usually people prefer to work on their own and not to have to much collaboration with people (well, at least that’s how it is in my course and all the electives classes I’ve taken). Then at the end of the day, they’ll come together once and for all to integrate what they’ve done individually into the final piece for submission. Well, that only works if your project doesn’t require regular integration and correlation across all sections. When you’re working on a project that equates to a 4AUs subject, that completely doesn’t apply. My current project is a perfect example of that. Well don’t get me wrong here. “Doesn’t apply” here doesn’t mean you won’t get good grade. If you say your sole goal of doing a project is to get good grades then you can stop reading this post.

Scoring should be only be the team’s short term goal and one of the project’s objectives. Learning is however the true aim of it. Again before I could go on, a bunch of people would rebut that we do learn sth. Learn what? Like how to write report? how to design cover page? how to program a software? to make a website? how to apply our lecture into our project? Well honestly, if that’s what each of us would learn every time we do a project, then the idea of project has failed completely. Again, I began to sound like a real smart ass here. I mean who the hell don’t know the potically correct answer that the whole idea of project work is to let us learn about teamwork, leadership, blah blah blah. But what exactly did you learn?

You see, usually when u try asking a person what he learned after completing a project. He’d go, “I learned how to work in team.”, “I learn how to handle leadership.”, “I learn that teamwork is important in life.”  or sth along those lines. This is why I like to listen to real leader talk. If you pay attention to them, real good leader/ team worker they don’t boast about how great a leader they are neither they would say anything about knowing leadership and teamwork. Come on, this is like a small school project that barely simulate anything in a working society. If you say u alrd can learn how to handle teamwork and leadership just by doing a few projects in school. I think that’s pure rubbish.

With that said, there is where I have say that I’m glad to have such a screwed up project. It makes the learning points of the project more obvious and easier to pick up. Imagine if all your projects were to go smoothly and peacefully, you would never really know what could’ve gone wrong, would you? In fact, I spend more time reflecting on the project than doing the project itself. One of the things I asked myself most frequently during the course of this project is “out of all the many causes to the failure of this project, which one would I say is the key cause to everything?” Some people would think that it’s a dumb question because it’s so rethorical. “Isn’t it obvious that it’s failed leadership?” Well that’s the thing. I feel that we are so blinded by the institution teaching and society’s over emphasis on leadership that people automically assume leadership is the key to everything. I mean some people don’t even know why leadership is crucial, and just know that it is. So many people told us so that we agreed to it without condition. Then when you’re put in the a leader position, you’ll start questioning yourself what exactly is important about leadership in a team or an organization? And only when you manage to make it work through your leadership then you have the right to agree that leadership is really the key and is crucial.

Omg! I think I watch too much nigahiga that I start to have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) also. I just realize I just rambled all over the place and haven’t really made any point. Well my point is…. my project sucks big time!! Teehee!!

Sexism: Gay & Lesbian

What comes to your mine when I say “he’s gay”? And what about when I say “she’s lesbian”?

I was having conversation with my fellow student assistants during lunch the other day about sth else and somehow we ended talking about gay and lesbian. Apparently, I’ve been using the terms Gay too casually and Lesbian too strictly. According to online dictionary, gay mean homosexual (well beside, the its other normal meaning) and lesbian means female homosexual. Quite straight forward. But for me, the impression of both terms is deviated from their formal definition. My impression of gay is more toward guys behaving like a girl than homosexual. And often use the word “gay” to refer to guy behaving like a girl or more casually referring to a 2 guys doing things together. Hence, I usually don’t mean it when I say gay. It’s like a figure of speech or cliche that I use among my peers. But apparently, I’ve been using it so lightly that I tend to forget there are people take the word for what it’s defined and get offended by it. Any opinion on that?

On the other hand, I totally mean it when I say lesbian. I won’t use lesbian unless I really know that they’re lesbian which either mean they declare it or I witness them showing sexual intimacy towards one another. I won’t even use lesbian when 2 girls always do things together or go shopping hand in hand. That’s why when people tell me “they’re lesbian.” I will go “really!? how you know?”. But when they say “they’re gay” I was like “ok. I see.” What about you?

Lastly, from where I come from, gay normally refers a guy behaving like girl or surrounded by girls all the time and lesbian is unheard of. When I came overseas, it’s quite the opposite. Over here, if you’re surrounded by girls all the time, they’d more or less think that you’re a player which mean u’re a damn straight guy. And if you behave like a girl also doesn’t mean you’re gay because some gays here behave even more manly than a straight guy.

Morale of the story, I think I should be careful not to throw the term around casually when I’m socializing outside my circle of friends.

The Farewell

Yesterday was the mass departure for some of us, including me, from our beloved facebook online game clan, called Suikoden. The chatroom of this small clan was filled with a mixture of emotions, relief, sadness, disappointment, shock, and even a slight anger. Well all in all the departure and farewell went pretty quick. Though it was kinda abrupt but I think it was for the best. The longer it takes the harder it is for those who were leaving as well as for those who’re staying. It’s funny how most of us get so emotional of this little community created solely for entertainment purpose. If you weren’t apart of it you’d never understand that feeling. A lot of ignorant people will dismiss the sentiment as virtual obsession. Yes everything was virtual but I can assure 1 thing that is real and that is the friendship we built through playing it and being a part of this little virtual community.

Suikoden is the 1st online game clan (well it’s not even exactly a true blue online game) that I actually got so attached and involved in. I’d say that now I finally have a taste of what some of those online game addicts feel. With this, I understand that gamers sometime are not addicted because of their obsession to be powerful (in the game), to escape reality but instead, it maybe the bond and attachment that they’ve built with various people over the net that prevent them from leaving. All in all, it has been a fun ride. It allows me to keep in touch with my real life friends who’re residing at different part of the world. It also allows me to get to know more friends who I may actually going meet in real life someday. If not because of this stupid facebook application, our path may never cross for the rest of our lives.

Anyway, sometime it seems that it’s better not to get too attached to anything because you’ll never when you’re going to lose it.

Lastly, I wish all my Suikoden peeps all the best in their furture endeavor.

Life’s a Drama

For the past week since my exam was over, I found myself got entangled up in a few dramatic situation. First of all was me sulking and getting all moody over my poor performance in exam. After that, it was my friend turn sulk to over his. Then we talked to find out who’s worse. -_-” A few days later, one of my friends suddenly became overly irritating but I couldn’t do anything about it for some reasons. I figured I should lay my opinions somewhere to prevent it from accumulating to frustration. And well I did. And just 1 or 2 days back, in my online gaming clan, there was a member who raised a complain regarding a certain situation. The complain caused a few members to get quite emotional and the situation became more dramatic than it should’ve been.

This suddenly reminds me of how our lives are, in one way or another, similar to those Korean, Japanese, Chinese or Singapore drama. The basic idea behind the plot is the same and that is one’s emotion(s)/feeling(s) affects another person’s emotion, which in turn affects another’s. This chain reaction create a story. You often hear people say they want to live a happy life or they only long for happiness in their life. But you never hear people wanting misery or sadness to be part of their lives. However, the ugly truth is we can’t live without it. If we can’t have it in our lives, we unconsciously wish it to happen in our friends’ so we can be apart of that misery. And if it doesn’t happen in our lives and neither our friends’ lives, we will crave for it by other means. This is precisely why people loves watching those Asian dramas or those reality shows. To feel emotion, get emotional and ultimately, share that emotions.  But if you ask, not many of them will admit it. The reason is probably lie in my previous entry, titled “unappreciated“. There also the other bunch of people where they have “very good” reasons for doing so like “Dramas are interesting”, “drama helps you understand life”, “they teach us life lesson”, or a more sophisticated reason will be “drama is an art that portrays philosophy of life”. Let’s dissect those few reasons.

“Interesting” is most vague answer one can possibly give. What makes drama interesting. Is it the part where it makes cry? or the part where it makes you smile after you cry? or the part where it makes you curse the plot for making the characters so dumb and fall into every emotional trap that could never possibly happen in real life (well that is according to you of course)? “Dramas are interesting.” is a statement and not a reason.

Let’s move on to “helps us understand life” and “teach us life lesson”. Fun fact, this is what my mom told me when I made an ignorant comment about drama series being predictable, unrealistic, and boring. Well if you have seen enough of the outside world, you’d come to understand that life is far to complex and individualistic for drama to help us understand it, let alone teach us life lesson. What it does is exaggerate situation that some of us may face in life for us to relate our feelings and memory with. It’s funny how we human tend to find solace in other’s misery. On the surface we deny it but underneath we succumb to it.

I think I’m getting quite carried away with this so I’m just gonna end it here. This is 1 of the things we think and don’t say.

Defeated. Lesson Learned?

I’ve been away from here for quite some time due to Exam. I was so tempted to write about so many things during my mugging confinement period but I resisted the temptation everytime. Well I guess the first thing I should be writing now is reflection on the exam since it’s still hot and heated in my brain.

Well, as the title stated, it went pretty awful. To the point that I believe that I couldn’t have messed up anything in my life thus far more than this semester exam. After today’s paper, I was practically covered with sense of total defeat and disappointment. It was a complete mess. After a few hours of sulking, I finally came to my senses again and began wondering what was I dreaded for? I mean since secondary school, there were subjects that I wasn’t able to perform even though I put the most effort in it. Not like this is sth new in my academic endeavor. I think the obvious issue here is that I’m so concerned with the fact that in university, every result of every subject will effect the quality of my degree, which logically should affect my career life, at least initially. Though it may not exactly be the case, but such mindset was hard drilled into me since the very beginning that I couldn’t ignore the possibility of it happening. Well, this is how powerful society’s influence can be. You ignore it, it ignores you. Choices? Face it or fear it.

I’ll leave it at that as I have no concrete solution to myself for that. I still do what I always have done. Go through it and try to make it out alive in one piece (emotionally speaking).

Next issue is now that I know I screwed it up, what do I do? break down and cry? Nah.. Never happen, and I’d like to keep it at that. So? try Invent time machine and go back in time and study harder for it? I might as well go and sell my time marchine and become a millionaire. Reflect, Learn and Prepare? duh.. this is a no-brainer for any educated person. So here it goes..

Reflect: I think I know just exactly what went wrong. Most of it could be corrected except for a few fundamental issues that snowball the whole thing. That is the lack of drive and motivation to excel, the lost of ambition to compete and the absent of sense of achievement. Why would I want to excel in sth I’m not interest in excelling in? Why am I trying so hard to fit in where I don’t exactly want to belong? Why should I battle so hard for sth I’m not proud of winning? Some of these questions do pop up every now and then, and they bother me a great deal sometime. Most of the time I shoo them away by telling myself that I should stay focused and work hard. To keep it short, the bottom line is do I hate my course? Well, I recently have a good answer to that. I like learning what is being taught but not studying them.

Learn: What do I learn from this experience? To never pull and all nighter before your paper, and drink 2 cans of redbull. It never work! I totally got pwned by Mugging for Dummies and How to be a Mugger 101 lol but I had no choice though. It was either do or do (lol the word “die” is pretty sensitive in my school now I shall not use it too lightly). On a more serious note, life’s like that. No payne No gayne yerrhh!

Prepare: Well, first thing gotta get ready for worst in my results, of course. And depending on how bad they turn out to be, I will have make up for it in year 3 and 4. All I’m saying is IF it is bad, hahaha I’m still clinging on to that little hope that it isn’t that bad although I’m usually pretty accurate at judging my own performance in study.

Breaking Limits

I thought last semester was the busiest time of my life thus far but guess what, it was nowhere near this semester. I was amazed at how I finally got myself whined up in all these. First, I became Publicity Officer for my faculty club (Computer Engineering Club). In semester 1, I found it very hectic to handle that and study. When semester 1 was over, I thought I finally got the hang of it. Then when semester 2 hits, I first found myself overloading my subjects. Before I know it, Chinese New Year is over and I have 4 Project and 1 CIDP (Computer Innovation Design Project) at hands. I was like huh?? then I was like what??? then I was …zzzZZZ. Then yesterday I had a very good news that came at a very bad timing. I got offered a part-time job that I thought I would never get it. I anyhow applied for fun in somewhere like January. Only February they called back. The Opportunity to learn and earn in this job is too good to reject. I don’t think opportunity will just come knocking at me anytime I want, so of course I accepted the offer. So yeah that was how I came to where I am right now…. then I was like huh?? again then I went yaay?? then I was ……..

Breaking Limits indeed. Whether this is my luck or misfortune, I dunno but this is definitely a challenge. So I shall do what I was always taught to do in school, TAKING ON THE CHALLENGE.

Finally, all the best to me, Merry Christmas to my brain, and Happy New Year to my grades. ^o^

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Another year has passed, and another year is here. Whatever happened last year is now history and whatever happened this year is still a mystery. All I can do is to reflect on the history and try to solve the mystery so that I don’t end up in misery. Many things went well, and many went wrong as well. This year I’m going to make more go well and less go wrong. But whatever it is, I still have to make my new year resolutions to get a blur vision of my direction for this year.

That aside, I gotta say last year I had one of the most happening New Year eve and an a fun-filled New Year this year too. It cheered me up from the bad news after Christmas.With that, I’m ready to get started with another year!

Response to Chiyo No Chichi’s entry

Refer to: Chiyo no Chichi’s entry on Monday, December 01, 2008

I found it very intriguing to me personally and it makes my fingers itchy. But since he doesn’t have a comment box and I don’t think a tag box can accommodate my long winded-ness. So yeah I’ll take one entry to respond to that.

Well, I couldn’t agree more with you. It’s easier to understand them from where you are since it’s a developed country but when it comes to people in poor country like mine, I can’t comprehend them at all. They spend too much money on what they want and too little on what they need. At one point, it seems as though what they need is what they want. But I have to say that having what you want effortlessly does breed a bad habit.

Hehehe, anyway working really opens your eye, doesn’t it? I have to disagree with you one thing though. Even though, money is hard to make, that’s why I can afford to spend what I earned myself on what I want with no guilt. I would also be willing to spend my 1 month salary to go to UK for 1 week (if 1 month salary is enough lol).  Why? Because, if I don’t go now and I may regret it later since it’s not sth you can do anytime like going playing sport or going shopping. If I wait till I’m older, I may lose the adventerous spirit due to work pressure and stuff, and you may not be so free to get me around anymore since you’ll be working too. Furthermore, right now, I don’t have family (well, I do have family but I’m refering the one that I’m solely respsonsible for. I don’t mean to insult your intelligence but I just bracket as pre-emption, in case you shoot back. ) so majority of my salary would go to indulging my personal needs and wants. When family comes under our responsibility, we’ll definitely have to redefine the term “financial planning”. Yeah well, that’s only how I see though.

First Entry

I’m really blog hopping. Just wanna try out new things on the web. From LiveJournal, Blogspot, Multiply and now WordPress. I’ve heard a lot of good things about WordPress. I couldn’t help but sing up and try it out to see how.

I’ll dedicate my this wordpress blog to my IT, Web, Designs and Entertainment hobbies.